The Program in Pulmonary Aging at the GRC-BLSA has focused upon: a. Development of a Mathematical Model of Pulmonary Aging The age-related decline of individual pulmonary function (as a percent of BLSA predicted) may be described over longitudinal follow-up by a mixed-effects model which includes parameters for Intercept, Time Interval, (Time Interval)2, and Age. A Gaussian distribution of the modeled pulmonary function provides age- and sex-specific percentile growth (decline) curves for normal pulmonary function as determined from BLSA healthy, nonsmokers, without evidence of heart disease. b. Relation of Accelerated Decline in Pulmonary Function to Ischemic Heart Disease A significant association has been observed between rate of pulmonary function decline and the development of IHD. After adjustment for risk factors of cardiovascular disease, a proportional hazards model describes a significant relative risk for incident IHD associated with pulmonary function decline. Using the mixed-effects model coefficients for FEV decline as the time-dependent covariate, along with covariates for FEV1% predicted/Original, Smoking, Hypertension/cardiac medication, Cholesterol, and Participation status, a 7-fold relative risk for cardiac death and a 3-fold relative risk for hard cardiac endpoints was observed for BLSA participants in the worst quintiles of FEV decline.